The Perils of Internet Voting

Despite allthehullaballoo about the potential for voter intimidation on Nov. 2, there is a greater danger to the integrity of the midterms–one that has received far less attention. As I write in a Time.com piece up today:

During next month’s midterm elections, 33 states will allow a few million military and overseas voters to return their ballots online. Yet few, if any, states have taken the time to test their networks. While it may be tempting to jettison long lines, hanging chads and finicky voting machines for the ease of the Web, experts warn that Internet voting invites disaster. “We don’t have the technology yet to do this in a secure way, and we may not for a decade or more,” says Ron Rivest, a computer scientist and cryptography expert at MIT. The worst-case scenario? “You may find elections that end up with a totally unclear result,” Rivest says. “You may find the entire system taken over and trashed.”